Manage your subscription

Technology: British computers get a hot line to the US

By ELISABETH GEAKE

British researchers will be able to link directly to the largest computer
network in the US from October, giving them access to computers and databases
and easing communication with their American counterparts and other colleagues
worldwide. This will encourage collaboration and could raise the international
profile of British researchers.

Among those certain to benefit are molecular biologists working on the
human genome project. For the international human genome mapping workshop
in London next week, the main repository of genetic information, the Genome
Database, will be brought on computer tape across the Atlantic from Baltimore
so that delegates can work on it during the workshop (see ‘Where does the
genome project go from here?’, this issue). But, from October, there will
be direct access to the database at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The two networks to be linked are JANET, the Joint Academic Network,
which connects nearly all the polytechnic and university networks, and a
few research institutions, in Britain and Internet in the US. Internet is
a similar network but on a much larger scale: it connects more than 535
000 computers on networks in every continent, including Antarctica. Up to
two million people use it every day.

The two networks can be thought of as a kind of telephone system for
computers, with the link as a transatlantic phone cable. A computer on a
network can talk to, read data and run programs located on other computers
connected to the network.

Advertisement

Unfortunately, JANET and Internet use different methods of coding information,
known as protocols, so the information they carry is not interchangeable.
Devices which convert the codes, called gateways, have been available for
some time, but are not perfect translators and act as bottlenecks.

Now JANET’s hardware and software is being modified so that it can carry
its own protocol, X25, and the IP protocol used by Internet. A transatlantic
link, called Fatpipe, is already in place (Technology, 24 March 1990). This
can carry data at a rate of 1.5 million bits, the equivalent of about 200
000 characters, per second. The funding has come from the Universities Funding
Council’s information services committee.

Francis Rysavy, head of computing services at the Medical Research Council’s
Clinical Research Centre in Harrow, says that biologists in particular will
benefit: ‘IP is used by the molecular genetics and biology communities worldwide.
In order to succeed in their endeavours the British researchers require
to use it as well.’

Ian Craig, lecturer in genetics at Oxford University, says the link
could raise the profile of British genetic researchers: ‘The genome database
editors (who check the data) in the nature of things have tended to be local
to Baltimore. If you have direct communications, it makes no difference
whether you’re in Britain or Baltimore.’